Hear My Soul Speak
by DarkmoonSigel
Summary: An AU about how Will might of met Hannibal differently since they both knew Alana. A dinner party gone wrong or terribly right. You decide. Not Beta Read. M/M Rated T for language, and Hannibal being Hannibal. Murder husbands...kinda. Love at first sight...kinda.


Hear my soul speak:  
The very instant that I saw you, did  
My heart fly to your service.  
(The Tempest, 3.1)

OoOoO

Baltimore. Why the fuck was he in Baltimore, Maryland of all places? Oh yeah…because Alana was beautiful, just about his only friend, and had asked him to be here for her.

'Here' was in the driveway of Baltimore's wealthier neighborhoods, the house it belonged to far grander than anything Will had ever owned or lived in. He tried not to resent its owner already. Will would be introduced soon enough to him. Apparently, this little dinner party was being thrown by one Hannibal Lecter, a longtime friend of Alana's. Will was acting as her plus one tonight, but only in the capacity of friend. This wasn't a date. Always honest with him, Alana had made that abundantly clear. This was more of an attempt at making Will more sociably in a controlled setting because he needed other friends who were not of the canine persuasion. He had only agreed so that he could keep the one human friend he had, though he had no intention of socializing more than he had to. Will was certain that he wouldn't be invited back either.

Sighing, Will made himself leave the relative safety of his car, taking a moment to go over his clothing with a lint roller several times. As much as he didn't care about making a positive impression, he did respect other people's property and knew not everyone appreciated pet hair and dander like the lonely people glitter it was. To his instant relief, it was Alana who answered the heavy door made unnecessarily from some exotic wood. Will added pretentious shit to his evolving idea of Hannibal Lecter's design.

"You're late!" Alana admonished with a grin and laugh, her reddened cheeks and nearly empty glass in hand letting Will know that she was already several beers in. "You're lucky I already warned Hannibal that you had a tendency to run late."

"Hannibal?" Will tested their host's name out aloud on his tongue, scrunching his nose up at how it tasted to him. Unusual, foreign, and not quiet fitting to his palette. Will realized he must have focused on it for longer than he should have, noticing his surroundings in a belated manner. The room he had been led into probably had some sort of fancy name for it but to hell if Will knew what it was. Peering about, he deemed it a mausoleum. It was a fancy one like the Taj Mahal, but this was a place where death hung his hat, the air leaving Will's lungs.

Numerous animal skulls on display peered back at Will, looking at him unimpressed by his assessment. The room held a chill that not even the lit fireplace couldn't displace for all its fine efforts. Perhaps it was the patterned marble floor tile or the fact this home was owned by a killer of some caliber might have had something to do with it.

"Will, are you alright?" was the concerned question that brought Will to the here and now, Alana looking over at him with searching eyes. It took a moment but Will realized that they were not alone here anymore, two other gazes upon him and neither of them were welcome.

Jack Crawford and Frederick Chilton watched him with varying degrees of interest, making Will want to run and hide. One man he knew of in passing, having had a disagreement with Crawford a while back over his silly museum with its ridiculous name. Since then, the agent had been hounding Will to come work for him, an offer that Will continuously declined. He had no interest in becoming the agent's bloodhound.

The other Will only knew of in passing and what he had heard of Chilton made him curse under his breath. The administrator of Baltimore's State Hospital for the Criminally Insane was not a person Will had any inclination to talk to, especially after he had learned about the man's interest in his abilities and precarious mental state.

Perfect, just fucking perfect. He was in a serial killer's house with woman he couldn't be in love with, a headstrong FBI agent he didn't trust, and a pompous, incompetent asshat who would try to commit him if Will revealed their host's true nature.

"I'm fine. Just have a headache." Will mumbled, shaking his head as he pulled an ever-present bottle of aspirin out of his coat's pocket. He made a show of dry swallowing a couple of pills to help alleviate Alana's concern.

"You look a little flushed." Alana said, even as she pulled him toward to the other company before he could make that his excuse to leave.

"Stress makes me run hot." Will said as he narrowed his eyes at her. Alana was sober enough to catch it, wincing in guilt from it.

"I didn't mean to ambush you…" she murmured, linking her arm through his own to help ground him. "I hadn't realized that Hannibal was inviting either until it was too late. It would have been rude to cancel, and Hannibal abhors rudeness."

"Oh yay, a serial killer with a quirk." Will mused to himself as he absorbed more of his surroundings, somewhat in a daze. Originally, he had just been hoping to survive the evening in a social aspect, not in the real meaning of the word. Barely paying attention to unnecessary introductions, Will got the sinking feeling that the odds of that happening were becoming less likely the more he looked around.

Antiquated medical equipment on display hinted to Will that Hannibal was of the medical profession. The number of blades in one form or another confirmed this. If Will was a betting man, he would place hard money on surgeon. The books in the room were in various languages, a large number of them baring French titles, though Will spotting some Japanese and what he presumed to be Russian for the moment so there was a good chance Hannibal was foreign as well.

There was a pattern forming all around Will, making him feel trapped. This wasn't a house. It was a trap and tomb all in one, and he had walked right into it. Their host was a highly intelligent psychopath with loads of experience and an unhealthy dose of sadism to boot.

They were so fucked.

Getting lost in his own head as other people made tedious attempts at small conversation around him, Will desperately constructed a profile for survival, his if not all of theirs. They were in danger and Will didn't have a shred of evidence to convince them or prove otherwise. Even if he did, Will couldn't figure out a way of presenting it without making himself sound insane. He lived and breathed killers and their case files so he had to figure out who Hannibal Lecter really was, learn his pathology and quickly.

Dismissing the case files in his head of already caught and incarnated killers, Will opened up his mind. Making his mental space one giant room, Will threw folders over his shoulders left and right as he eliminated possibilities. Letting Alana carry the conversation, Will ignored prompts and inquiries, barely bothering to answer beyond an occasionally 'yes' or 'no' as he scanned the room, desperate for any sort of tell.

Too violent, too careless, not violent enough, too old and probably dead, too young, not enough kills…Will's mental shelving was quickly becoming empty, just a few folders left, none of which Will wanted to open. It took one sketch to make everything fall into place, Will's stomach sinking like a rock to hit bottom.

Fuckity fuck. They were all so dead. Will had to laugh, causing all of his company to look over at him in surprise.

"Do you find eight missing girls funny for some reason, Mr. Graham?" Crawford asked, narrowing his eyes at the man holding his sides like they hurt.

"Eight dead girls. They're not missing." Will gasped, fighting to not fall into hysterics in front of people who would put him in a little padded room for fun. Not that it mattered. They were all so fucked.

The Chesapeake Ripper. Of course, it had to be the Chesapeake Ripper. Fuck him blind and dead, he had the devil's luck. Will wondered what he could have done in a past life to deserve this.

"I believe I have missed something important." said an unfamiliar voice from behind Will who was unable to place the accent. It warped the stranger's words into something extraordinarily lyrical and soft, more like a plucked note than a spoken word.

"You have no idea." Will said before he could stop himself, turning around to face the Chesapeake Ripper. For a serial killer, he wore the ugliest damn suit Will had ever seen in his life, but he had a fascinating face and way about him. Will tried to remember when and where he had seen sharper cheekbones and failed. The eyes that studied him were interesting and interested in him, their shade a peculiar shade of rarely seen burgundy.

"You must be the infamous Will Graham that Alana has been keeping all to herself for so long." the monster smiled thinly at Will, offering his hand to Will who took it and shuddered.

"That I am." Will muttered, gritting his teeth as he tried to get himself back under control. Fear was making his sick though, sweat pouring off of him as every Ripper kill replayed itself through his head on an endless loop. His own pitch black nature, hidden and ignored for too long, was screaming to be let out, the claws of a beast made of fur, antler, and inky feather making deep furrows in their flesh prison.

"Pardon me for saying this, but you do not look well." Hannibal said, peering at Will what could be misconstrued for concern by their onlookers. Will could see the curiosity moving all the clockwork in that head though. Hannibal was a predator in every sense of the word. He could tell something was off about Will. He figured it out soon enough though, too soon, knew that Will was in on what lay behind his mask. All it took was Will moving in front of Alana when Hannibal took a step toward them.

"Must have caught something. I'll make my excuses and my goodbyes now, and have Alana drive me home." Will smiled weakly. As far as escape plans went, it was pretty weak, a fragile idea thrown together and held in place with lies and hastily said prayers.

"Alana has already had several beers. I would not feel comfortable with her behind the wheel. Luckily for you, I was a doctor before I became a psychiatrist." Hannibal assured the room while Will tried not to go into hysteric about his run of shit luck. Of course, he had to be right about Hannibal being a doctor.

"I wouldn't want to impose or ruin your dinner party." Will went for the polite route, only to be met by a master of etiquette.

"You are my guest, and as a host and a doctor, your comfort as well as your health is important to me. I believe Alana, Jack, and Frederick will be most understanding if dinner is a little late." Hannibal said, dealing out a coup de grâce to Will's escape plan.

"Actually…" Frederick began, his interference startling Will who had honestly forgotten that there were other people in the room with them.

"Especially if they ever wanted to be invited back." Hannibal finished that thought for Chilton.

"I don't want to get anyone else sick…" Will said, already knowing it was a feeble attempt.

"You'll do just that though by putting off my offer." Hannibal said lightly but there was a warning there. Will read between the lines, nodding back weakly to watch the smug bastard smile in answer. Hannibal knew Will didn't give a flying fuck about the other two, but Alana was as good as dead if Will didn't go along with what Hannibal wanted, and right now, Hannibal wanted Will alone with him.

Leaving Alana and the rest to follow Hannibal deeper into his house…spiders, flies, and parlors immediately springing to mind… going though a lavish cobalt blue dining room into an equally impressive kitchen to some side stairs. Will picked up on more than he ever wanted to about the Chesapeake Ripper. For one, he was a cannibal. The organs from all the victims taken hadn't been surgical trophies, at least not in the normally accepted sense. The kitchen was proof enough of that. That knowledge compounded with heavenly smells coming from the oven made Will nauseous, bile rising up in his throat, but not the usual reason one would expect. The monster in him was purring, wanting to know the taste of that rare meat.

Not that he would get a chance to find out. Hannibal was going to kill him, of course, with an FBI agent downstairs, and get away with it. Will was certainly there was a kill room somewhere in this house of cold marble and bone art. Hannibal would feed them all lies along with dinner, and they would swallow it down, thinking the taste of it was truth. Will would disappear without a trace, few would mourn his absence, and life would go on.

"Can you tell Alana at some point to check in on my dogs?" Will heard himself ask, the sound of it far off in the distance. He's already back in his head with one case file in hand, the folder of it wet and slick with crimson that soaks through the thick card stock to stain his hands.

"Why would I do that?" Hannibal asked. Will found the man's face fascinating to watch, for all the nothing it gave back. Minute expressions would play across it like a ripples in a pond, the monster under the water in hiding switching out its masks to convey an expected or corresponding emotion on the surface.

"Don't….just don't. We both know what you're planning." Will sighed. He didn't have the patience anymore to deal with such pageantry.

"And what would that be?" Hannibal arched a barely there brow back at him. It made Will want to punch the smug asshole in his throat. Instead, Will made himself look at Hannibal and really see something he had missed.

"Oh…You can't admit it." Will blinked, realization making him pause. "You're too used to hiding, even if it's in plain sight."

"I think you have mistaken…"Hannibal started to say, only to be cut off.

"Don't lie to me. I prefer sins of omission to outright deception so please don't waste my time." Will snapped, before making himself take a deep calming breath. "I see you. I see what you are."

"And what am I? Tell me how you see me." Hannibal said to only flesh out the profile in Will's head, who added narcissist to the list.

"The snake who slithers by the house. A killer who makes pigs into art with an elegance and a grace that is unmatched." Will admitted almost wistfully. If these were to be his last words, he would make them honest. He closed his eyes and waited for his end. Quid pro quo, even steven. His death for Alana's life. "I name you, devil. You are the Chesapeake Ripper."

It never came, Will only met with the room's stillness rather than the bite of a blade in his gut or the tightening of fingers around his neck. Risking a look, Will peeked through his thick lashes to find Hannibal staring at him, his strangely hued eyes dark and fathomless.

"You are going to tell Alana yourself to look after your dogs." Hannibal said after a long moment, ripe from tension but not the violent variety. Will shifted uncomfortably under that keen gaze.

"Why would I do that?" Will licked his lips, instantly regretting the gesture as eyes followed how his tongue wet his mouth. The attention to his detail was almost obscene.

"Because you are going to feel unwell after dinner. I have many guest rooms and will extend an invitation to you to make use of one. You will accept while declining any offers of a ride from the others. You will sleep here tonight, and have breakfast with me in the morning." Hannibal said softly, the quiet of his words somehow making them more imposing. This was a man who didn't need to shout to be heard or obeyed. He could kill with a nod and conquer with a word.

"You still haven't answered my question. Not really. Perhaps I should rephrase it." Will tried to redirect that interest, that terrible focus upon him. "Why would you do that?"

"I wish to speak with you at length in private without distraction." Hannibal said easily enough, the thin smile lifting the corners of his lips, cutting into Will deeper than any knife. This monster had plans for him. Great and terrible plans that made Will tremble though not entirely out of fear.

"I'm not some toy you can wind up and let go to see how I work. I'm not here for your entertainment." Will hissed. He was his own kind of predator so he snapped his teeth at the killer approaching him, trying to make the other back off and give him some space. It didn't work, Hannibal too close, too there for Will's liking.

"And yet, my dear William, you are going to do everything I ask of you. You will eat my food, drink my wine, and sleep in my bed." Hannibal murmured as he leaned into Will's personal space, inhaling deeply as he did so. A large hand found the curve of Will's hip while another tangled itself in dark curls, securing Will's head in place and held still as the empath was scented. Will wondered what monsters smelled like to one another.

"I don't find you that interesting."

"You will."

OoOoO

The end

OoOoO

AN- Written on the floor of a bathroom, in between bouts of vomiting. Yay, body! Feeling a little better now so this got posted.  
Not Beta title is from Shakespeare. Culture to the face!


End file.
